45: Aaron Sorkin reads Brietbart for inspiration

When Academy Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin began to craft the characters in his rendition of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the Broadway stage, he honed in on the town’s unemployed villain, Bob Ewell, and gave him real anxieties inspired by today’s right-wing politics.

“I'll tell you where I went to find Bob Ewell, Breitbart,” Sorkin tells Salon. “A lot of Bob Ewell's dialogue was written by commenters at Breitbart. I'm not joking.”

Ewell is the victim of poverty, Sorkin explained, and he is able to articulate an anger to Atticus Finch that the other Bob Ewells in the book and movie versions of “To Kill a Mockingbird” didn’t touch on. According to Sorkin, Ewell’s thing is, "You think you're better than me? You look down on me. You think you're better than me?"

Sorkin also opens up about the long, difficult, and very engaging process of adapting “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the stage, currently on Broadway until September, and how America’s deeply divided politics—including Trump’s presidency, his supporters and liberals, too—all informed and continue to bring new meaning to his version. 

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